Recovery of real estate ownership documents in Ukraine. Part 1

One of the most popular questions which are related to property matters is recovery of real estate’s documents. In spite the fact that this problem is legally clear, at the first sight, it can be also so complicated that this may get delayed for a long time. But there may be urgency to sell an apartment or a land plot. That’s why you should know which actions must be done for recovering real estate’s documents correctly.

This article is the first one of the series of recovering of real estate’s documents. Problems on this are examined in details in the second part.

Usually recovering means issuance of duplicates of real estate’s documents. As it is said in the Letter of State Registration Service dated the 15th of January 2013 no. 12-06-15-13 “there is no a clear definition of a duplicate in the current laws, however, according to the practice of using terms, words in a jurisdiction, a duplication is the second example of a document which has the same as an original one legal force. So document’s duplicate must have the same information as an original one. In fact, issuance of a duplicate is reproduction of document’s text. A purpose of it is recovery of a document if it is not possible according to some circumstances.” The National Standard of Ukraine 2732:2004 “Office work and archival matters” gives a definition: an original’s duplicate is a re-decorated official document for using it instead of a lost or damaged original, which has the same legal force.

Ownership documents can be lost for different reasons. The most popular are loss, spoilage and theft. However, every situation has its own legal features which define a procedure of recovering. At the same time it is important to know that loss of the document doesn’t lead to deprivation of ownership. But it causes some problems with realization of this right.

In general, this process can be divided into such stages:

Submitting of advertisement to a magazine or newspaper about loss of a document, for example, a certificate of ownership and its nullification;

Submitting of application form about issuance of a duplicate to the state body which drafted this document;

Registration of a duplicate at the State Registration Service (if necessary).

You need to admit that reasons for loss have their own features in actions. For example, a fact of theft must be fixed by a territorial body of internal affairs and victim must get a special certificate. If a document was destroyed because of some accidents, for example, flooding of a flat, then you must get information from your housing service, in a case of a fire – from the State Emergence Service of Ukraine.

A legal practice shows that the process of recovery depends on a few important matters. The main of them are: which document is lost, when and who issues this document.

The State Registration Service in its Letter dated the 15th of January 2013 no. 12-06-15-13 defines that “in general, if a document is lost or damaged then only a subject, which is issued it, can issued a duplicate”. According to it, the most typical state bodies are the State Registration Service, bureau of technical inventory, state agencies of land resources, private and state notaries.